At the time, CEO J Sider told us that BandPage was shooting for deeper integration in the future: the idea of artists being able to promote merchandise, tickets and VIP ‘experiences’ to people who’d been streaming their music. Now it’s taken another step along that road through a deal with Rhapsody.

The partnership will see Rhapsody sending “targeted emails and notifications” to fans who’ve recently streamed or bought music from certain artists, with links to their BandPage Experiences – essentially BandPage’s equivalent of Kickstarter rewards.

Third Eye Blind (pictured), Creedence Clearwater Revival, Brandon Boyd and Parliament are among the first artists to be included in the partnership. In Third Eye Blind’s case, people who’ve played them on Rhapsody will be offered VIP ticket packages to upcoming gigs.

“The newest – and most exciting – way for musicians to generate revenue is through contextual targeting on streaming platforms like Rhapsody,” said Sider in a statement yesterday.

“Conversions happen when we reach fans in moments when they are truly and deeply focused on that artist” And while this is an experimental partnership with a few artists on a service with around 1m subscribers, we think it’s a sign of much bigger things to come, with other streaming services and other D2C providers.

Beats Music has already signalled its intentions to work with Topspin on deep integration for artists’ D2C activities when it launches later this year. We’d be surprised if the likes of Spotify, Deezer and Rdio right through to Apple and Google weren’t thinking hard about this too.

Bridging the gap between streaming and D2C has the potential to answer a lot of the questions being raised by artists about streaming’s impact on their careers. BandPage, Topspin, Bandcamp, Kickstarter… A modern-day streaming music service should be sitting down with all of the above to scope out possible partnerships.